Definitely didn't get my 8-10 miles in today. Opted to hike up to summit of Nugget Hill with MA and Berlin instead. My legs felt better than I thought they would given yesterday, which I suppose isn't all that surprising... 2 days after is always worse than the day after a big one. Hot today... but the sun felt good. Went up in my chacos.

Pack: worked well but I had some pretty nasty bruising near my hips at the end.

My body was really sore for the last several hours. This was in part bc of the offtrail portion, but in part because of the mileage. I set out to do only 31 miles. My ipod tracker back at the car that evening showed 44.4 miles. It overestimates these sorts of things, but not by more than a few miles. In fact, I have a conversion that works well for this type of outing (shorter steps, steeper terrain), and that puts me right around 41 miles. Hence why I ran out of food.

Just like the few available reports online say, there is not one 'great route' between Boulder-Grand Pass and Lake Verna, where you pick up the trail again. On the E to W route, I stayed high on the ridge for awhile then dropped down closer to Lake Verna - a pretty gnarly set of log crosses, creek crosses, and steep off trail descent. Portions of a foot path visible here and there, but not much. On the W to E route, I stayed by the lakes all the way up to Fourth Lake, and this foot path was rather nice actually. But upon reaching the top (east side) of Fourth Lake and noticing that the trail seemed to be headed towards Fifth Lake, I bailed offtrail and uphill. Very steep here. Legs were very tire all the way to the pass.

Beyond the 2 miles on either side of the parking lot (Wild Basin, West Portal), I saw almost no one. Exception was a very young couple (new friends: Jack and Kira) headed to a cabin in Grand Lake (they did the traverse in the one direction).

New favorite campsite (in addition to last saturday's find)... offtrail portion of the East Inlet drainage, complete with a sandy beach.

An absolutely A++ rating of labor on this Labor Day holiday. Very special, and to be remembered for a long time.